Sunshine and Shadows (24 page)

"I don't know what to say," Adele said helplessly. "I'd always thought that if you ever got married, I'd have to leave this house, and I do love it. This seems—this seems like more than I deserve, Lisa. You're so kind."

"I'll feel good about your living here. You'll take care of things the same as I would," Lisa said.

"Adele! Adele!" Connie called from beyond the reeds. "Am I doing this right?" She was demonstrating a jerky elementary backstroke.

"No, your rhythm is all wrong. Your legs and your arms are supposed to come up at the same time—wait a minute and I'll show you."

"By the way, we haven't told anyone else that we're getting married," Lisa told Adele hastily.

"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me," Adele called over her shoulder as she headed for the water.

Lisa smiled to herself. Well, she had done it. She had told Adele, and Adele was happy for them.

Tomorrow she'd call her parish priest. She'd reserve the church for a Saturday morning in the middle of June and then tell Jay the date.

She shrugged off the nagging feeling that Jay wasn't ready. They loved each other as they'd never loved anyone else, and they couldn't wait to get married.

So why did she feel so insecure? Why did she feel that they weren't really sharing their lives?

* * *

The least he could do was buy her an engagement ring. She'd already signed up for the church.

Jay idled outside a few jewelry-shop windows, studying the situation. He finally decided that Lisa would like a diamond solitaire, and he wanted to buy one as big as he could afford. The wedding ring would be a simple narrow gold band.

He chose a lovely oval-shaped diamond. He could imagine the ring on Lisa's small finger, sparkling in the sunlight and telling the world that she belonged to him.

He loved Lisa with all his heart and soul; he had trouble with all this marriage business, that was all. The emotions engendered by the idea of a big wedding were mind-boggling. For instance, he knew that his mother would find it difficult to return even for so short a time to the West Palm Beach area, a place that would always be filled with bad memories for her. His stepfather, who had given Jay his last name and loved him like a son, would probably feel the same way.

And then there was the matter of friends. Whenever Jay ran into his old buddies around town, the ones he'd partied with in high school, they acted embarrassed. Not that they didn't like him; they did. They just didn't know what to say. Their lives and his had diverged sharply after Jay's sentencing. They'd gone on drinking, and he had never taken a drink since the day of the accident. His old friends didn't even know what to call him these days, Jamie or Jay.

The fact was that his engagement announcement in the paper would stir up all the old trouble again. People would say, "James Quillian... James Quillian," and they'd scratch their heads for a few moments, until they remembered that he was Jamie Watkins, that he'd changed his name and made a new life for himself, but the life he'd begun since the accident wouldn't count with a lot of these people. What would count was that he had killed a girl once and that he'd gotten off almost scot-free.

Damn! How long was it going to follow him around? Just when he'd allowed himself to think that he was free of it, the shame of his past slapped him in the face. His relationship with Lisa was the first happiness that he had dared to allow himself in a long, long time. He couldn't shake the feeling that it was wrong to feel so much pleasure, that he didn't have the right to be happy. He had denied himself this kind of fulfillment all his adult life.

He had mostly kept his own counsel since returning to Florida after law school. Most of the important people in his life today didn't know about his past, and that was the way he wanted it. Except for Sister Maria, the nuns at Faith Mission didn't know; the children he taught didn't know; Lisa didn't know.

And that was the problem.

Lisa knew that he liked granola brownies, making love on lazy Sunday afternoons, canoeing with her on the Loxahatchee, and her, not necessarily in that order. Lisa, to whom honesty was key, knew every important thing there was to know about him except his terrible secret.

And he couldn't bring himself to tell her.

* * *

On Saturday Lisa and Connie went to Yahola so that Lisa could teach a nutrition class and Connie could work in the art room. That afternoon on the way home they stopped briefly behind a converted school bus letting off passengers on the outskirts of the settlement.

"We have an appointment to go look at those puppies next week," Lisa told Connie as they waited for the bus to move.

"We do?" Connie said, clearly delighted. "What day?"

"Friday," Lisa said. The bus increased its speed and lumbered onto a shell rock road bisecting the highway; Lisa was finally able to push on the accelerator and make tracks for home.

"I wish we could go see the puppies tonight," Connie said.

"Well, we can't. They won't be ready to leave their mother for another week, and besides, Jay and I are going out to dinner," Lisa told her.

"Tonight I'm going to show Adele how to make tortillas for supper. She buys them straight out of the frozen-foods case. Yuck," Connie said.

Lisa cast a sidelong glance at Connie. She wondered if Connie had any inkling of the seriousness of her relationship with Jay; she wondered if they gave themselves away when they were around her. He was always trying to steal a kiss when Connie's back was turned.

"You want to know a secret?" Lisa asked Connie.

"I love secrets," Connie said. "Tell, tell!"

"You have to promise not to tell the Sisters at the mission or your cousins until I say you can," Lisa told her.

"I promise," Connie said solemnly.

"Jay and I are engaged to be married," Lisa told her.

Connie's eyes grew wide, and a smile spread across her face. "You're going to get married? Really and truly married?" she squealed.

Lisa laughed at her expression of delight.

"As really and truly as two people can be," she affirmed. "We're going to be married on the third Saturday in June."

"Does Adele know?"

Lisa nodded, and Connie jiggled up and clown on the seat. "She knew and she didn't tell me! Oh, am I going to get her when we get home!"

"Don't be too hard on her, Connie. I asked her to keep it a secret."

"But how could she not tell? I deserve to know. I was there on your first date—wasn't the day we went canoeing on the river your first date? Wasn't it?"

"Almost. I guess we could count it as the first," Lisa said, smiling again.

"What about a ring? Aren't you supposed to get an engagement diamond?"

Lisa lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "He told me to wear something special when we go out to dinner. I think he might give it to me tonight."

Connie clapped her hands at this. "No matter how late you get in tonight, Lisa, come into my room and show me. I hope it's a be-
yoot
iful diamond."

"I'm sure it will be lovely," Lisa said. She could picture it in her imagination: a flawless, pristine diamond, not too big, not too little. She could hardly wait to begin wearing it.

She could hardly wait to become Mrs. Jay Quillian.

* * *

That night Lisa looked especially beautiful, her hair knotted on top of her head but trailing in careless wispy tendrils all around. The glow of the candle on their table polished her skin to mellow perfection. Her filmy white dress made her look like a bride, and a surge of emotion flowed through Jay when he thought that soon she would be his wife. It was hard to shake the feeling that he of all people did not deserve such complete happiness.

The restaurant was special, a place where they could watch the moon rise over the marina. They ate smoked oysters for an appetizer and a main course of fresh red snapper; the vegetables were crisply steamed. They ate slowly, enjoying the ambience, the charm, and the intimacy.

A trio played for after-dinner dancing, and when they danced, she felt feather-light in his arms. The diamond ring burned a hole in Jay's pocket. He could hardly wait to give it to her and see her eyes become enormous with pleasure and brimming with happy tears.

When the music stopped he said, "Let's get out of here," and she didn't even speak, just nodded and looked at him with those huge eyes. He threw money on the table and then they were outside hurrying to his car.

"Let's go for a walk on the beach," she suggested impulsively as they drove out of the parking lot. "It's a full moon."

"That brings out all the crazies," he said.

"Like us?" she said, moving close to him, and he laughed and kissed her because he
was
crazy, crazy about her.

He drove the car into one of the parking spaces near the wooden stairs to the sand. They had to pass a group of chattering teenagers, but when they reached the bottom of the steps, the beach was deserted. Lisa steadied herself with a hand on his arm and pulled off her shoes, and Jay took off his shoes and socks, too. He paused to roll up his pants legs, and Lisa, suddenly playful, danced tantalizingly out of reach at the edge of the surf until he chased her and caught her in the circle of his arms.

"I love you, Lisa," he said, holding her tight against him. "I love you so much. Has any other couple ever loved this much?"

"I suppose every couple asks themselves that question," Lisa said more thoughtfully than he had expected.

"Hmm," he said. He released her but caught her hand in his.

"Maybe the real question should be 'Has any other couple known each other as well?'" she said.

He darted a quick look in her direction. He wondered if she'd recently talked to someone who had known him long ago. Who could it have been? His mind ranged over a list of acquaintances and old friends, but he could think of no one. She was probably just congratulating herself on their getting to know each other so well in such a short period of time. And they had. Except...

"Lisa," he said quietly and with great gravity, "I feel as if I've known you all my life. Maybe it's always that way when you find another person who feels the same way you do about so many things. We have a mutual interest in the mission and in Connie, and—well, I could go on and on."

"Oh,
do,"
she said in that impish way of hers. She hadn't yet caught his serious mood.

"I have something I should tell you. I probably wouldn't have to, and it won't be as important to you as it is to me, but I want to get it out of the way. I don't want you to hear it from somebody else."

Her eyes were clear and puzzled. "What in the world are you talking about, Jay?"

"Something happened a long time ago, and it changed my life. I didn't mean to do it, and I've been paying for it ever since," he said evenly.

She stopped walking, and her face froze. "You make yourself sound like a criminal."

He captured both her hands in his and gazed down at her. "I am," he said. "I killed a woman."

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her eyes widened in disbelief, and she inhaled a deep breath, an inrush of surprised air. "I don't believe you," she said, her eyes searching his face.

"It was an accident," he said rapidly. "I'd been drinking at a graduation party when I was seventeen years old, and my car skidded through a red light in the rain and hit another car, a sports-car convertible. The girl who was driving it died. It was an
accident,
Lisa," he said when he saw the look of horror in her eyes.

"Megan," she said in a very small voice.

"What?" he said, clearly disconcerted.

"Megan. That's how Megan was killed, in the same way. The boy who killed her got almost no sentence at all—the judge sentenced him to weekends in jail and community-service work." She pulled her hands away from his and stood staring at him.

"That's what my sentence was," he told her. "It's how I got interested in kids and art. I taught my first art class to a group of disadvantaged kids in Gainesville when I was at the University of Florida. I was trying to make up for what I'd done."

"No," Lisa said clearly and distinctly. She had added the numbers in her head. Jay was twenty-eight years old, and Megan had been killed almost twelve years ago. Jay's birthday was next week. That would have made Jay seventeen years old in June of 2000, exactly the right age to be the driver of the car killed Megan.

"Lisa—"

"You're
him.
You're the one who killed her. My God, how can you be?" She sank down on the sand exactly where she stood and wrapped her arms around herself. She was trembling.

"Lisa?" he said, kneeling beside her. He'd never seen her like this.

"I don't feel okay right now. My stomach hurts." She leaned her head on her knees.

"Lisa, I—" he said, and he touched her shoulder.

She lifted her head. Suddenly the pieces tumbled into place. But how could it be? What weird coincidence had brought the two of them together? How could she have fallen in love with the man who killed Megan? A wave of nausea swept over her, and she stumbled to her feet and reeled away from him in revulsion. On the day of Megan's funeral, she had vowed to kill the man who brought Megan's life to an end, and even though that was a long time ago and she'd been in the first stages of her grief, she still harbored an anger toward him that would never go away.